Certain group of American men are dying "deaths of despair"

[Ohiogal]

But the U.S. is also the only rich country in the world where the mortality rate has been going up, not down. Much of that trend is driven by men without college degrees in America’s heartland, according to Brookings.

Despair and lower levels of well-being have played a key role in fueling the deaths of more than 1 million Americans from suicide, or health complications from drug or alcohol abuse from 2006 to 2015, Brookings found in its report, “Understanding the role of despair in America’s opioid crisis.”

The highest mortality rates are most prevalent in America’s heartland, in states such as Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky, Brookings found. Those regions are precisely the places where the manufacturing and coal mining jobs that used to provide predominantly men without college degrees a lower-middle-class existence as blue-collar workers have disappeared.

“We uncovered those death patterns,” Graham says. “What struck me is that poor African-Americans were three times as likely to be optimistic about the future as poor whites,” Graham said. “The metric that really stands out is not sort of happy, unhappy. Happy today doesn’t matter a whole lot. It’s hope for the future or lack thereof that’s really linked with premature mortality.”

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https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/deaths-of-despair-why-this-group-of-americans-has-higher-mortality-rates-130633528.html

******* seems to me those states did not accept Medicaid expansion, either.

[Bettie]

1. You know what the saddest thing about this is?

These are the very people whose lives could be made better by progressive/Democratic policy and they are also the ones who fight hardest against it because it might mean that people who are not white and male would also benefit.

[Aristus]

2. That's why I'm not sad about it.

Someone wants to commit suicide, I'm not going to help them pull the trigger.

But if they push me away while I'm trying to stop them, that's on them...

[Bettie]

4. I get that

but I still wonder why they cling to their hatred harder even than they do their own lives.

It honestly confuses me when they care so little for themselves, their families, their children that they throw away things that would make their lives better simply out of hate for other people.

It makes me sad to think that people are that filled with hate, though we see it with Spanky McCircusPeanut every day.

[cwydro]

6. Wow.

The empathy...

[demmiblue]

11. Years ago, a poster (not saying it is this one) made some similiar type of remarks...

about a teenager who was decapitated when he stuck his head out of a double-decker bus under an underpass.

I will never forget the abject inhumanity of that post.

[Aristus]

12. I know, right?

We're empathetic enough to want to pass legislation that could make the lives of people like this guy better. But he, and they, reject it, because the legislation will help people who aren't white.

They take our empathy and piss on it...

[RhodeIslandOne]

14. I work with a guy like this

He is a bigot and a misogynist. He listens to Michael Savage (actually was going to write a letter to Savage because he was critical of Trump on something) and all those right wing shit shows. He spends his money on lottery tickets, has a daughter on welfare and assisted housing yet has no recognition that she will suffer if Republicans get their way. The guy blames everything in life on Obama and Hillary and Trump is the savior. Sorry, but I’m done with empathy.

[KentuckyWoman]

13. It isn't as easy as racism

Yes a lot have bought into the lie that other poor people are responsible for their troubles. But the turn against the Democratic Party in this group is far deeper than that and complicated.

They learned unions could not protect their jobs. They learned "go back to school" pushed by Democrats mostly meant adding debt, losing sleep, and still making less money. They were told by every media outlet the loss value of the one asset they had, a home, was all the fault of Clinton's and brown people

I could go on. The image they hold is that basic institutions the Democratic party stands for have failed the working man.

[jcmaine72]

15. Where does the article say that these are registered Republicans who are offing themselves?

For all we know this could be the last remnant of our white male base in these areas that are punching their own tickets.

All I know is that I'd probably be more likely to want to do a header off a bridge if I lived in one of these red oil slicks.

[Moostache]

3. So, are you telling me that if we wait them out the MAGAts will disappear organically?

Oh goodness...I believe I am having the vapors...

I have no further energy to spend on these people...they want to continue voting against their self-interest and chortling along about "owning the libs", well, reap the whirlwind you have sown gentlemen.

Hope it was worth it to "own a lib" and lose your life in the trade...sounds like a pretty bad deal to me, but then again I tend to believe things like science and objective evidence and facts...

[unblock]

5. i wonder how much of this is the foxnews/hate radio audience.

a big part of their message is that minorities are taking over and that the future will be bleak for white men.

[Newest Reality]

7. Generally,

From your early-60's you are often toast if you lose a job and can't find another one. If you have nothing to fall back on or family and friends, then you are lucky to live in a tent somewhere these days. You become somewhat transparent.

It is difficult to deal with and deep despair is often the result.

It's a trend.

[ThoughtCriminal]

8. Self-inflicted hate and endless outrage is also killing them

You can't watch the non-stop hours of hate-talk radio, FOX News while surfing the right-wing haternet has got to be really bad for your health.

And there's a lesson there for us too.

[Patterson]

9. Arkansas expanded Medicaid through using Medicaid money to buy private insurance.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

10. Buttkisser Bevin helped Kentucky make it into that list